A Very Special Woman
by Kathy-SFF
Summary: BSG 2003. A look at a very special relationship.


A Very Special Woman  
  
There's only one woman for me. It wasn't always that way. I remember when I was younger, and I laugh at the women I use to be attracted to. They were lookers, beautiful, fast and sleek. When I was with one of them we were like starfire across the sky. Those memories are good ones, treasured ones.  
  
When I was ready to settle down, I met and married a beautiful woman who gave me two sons. I thought I gave her everything, but looking back I wasn't fair to her. She got what was leftover after I fulfilled my obligations to the military. She never complained and took pleasure in the short periods of time we had together, and in raising our sons. The death of our youngest son showed the flaws in our marriage. She needed more from me, but by then I had already met her. The woman I had been looking for my whole life. My wife and I parted amicably; I think she already knew that my heart was with another.  
  
I know her like I know myself; she is a part of me. She talks to me all the time, her voice is the first thing I hear in the morning, and the lullaby that sings me to sleep. She's not young, but then neither am I. We are a well-matched pair, a little old, more than a little banged up, a little crusty around the edges, but still dangerous and full of fight. To me she's beautiful, but her beauty hides the fact that she is strong and extremely lethal.  
  
We have been together over five years and were to retire together. The normal moans and groans of a fifty-year-old ship were like nagging complaints in my ears. She wanted retirement no more than I, and let me know it. She had been built to fight, not as one crewman said, "be a frak'n museum".  
  
Until the Cylons attacked.  
  
When the fighting began, she wanted to fight, but the Fleet, in preparation for turning her into a museum had taken most of her teeth. I thank the Lords for the squadron of Mark II fighters. I felt her pain as she took a direct nuclear hit, but as I have said she is strong and none of the radiation penetrated. I heard the strain of her engines as we were sent in to a spin. I could also feel her pain in the shaking of her frame from the fire in her forward flight pod. I know in her own way she mourned the loss of so many crew in the subsequent fire and depressurization. Both our final years had been spent training new recruits and so on the day of the attacks not only were we without weapons, but with a less than complete crew, and those that were there were raw trainees.  
  
Finally at Ragnar I could give her what she had been demanding of me since the attacks began. I could give her bullets, firepower for her guns. I could give her back the life she and I knew. We wanted to fight the Cylons, but after talking with our new President, and then seeing those two young people talking in CIC, I realized we also had a responsibility to protect the civilians. I heard no complaints from her, but then I never do. The steady hum of her engines saying, "I'm ready, Bill, just tell me what to do."  
  
So she led the fleet away from Ragnor and took up a defensive position to protect the civilians until they could FTL away. She is most beautiful when she is at her most lethal. I wish I could have seen her then, protecting the fleet, her mighty guns blazing in the face of two Cylon basestars. She established a perimeter so our fighters could launch, then bravely held her ground taking incoming fire and allowing the civilian fleet to escape. Despite the destruction that surrounded me in CIC, I could still hear the steady hum of her powerful engines and the occasional rumble that signaled use of her heavy artillery. She is doing what she was made to do. She waited patiently until my son and Starbuck could get back aboard. And then she jumped to the rendezvous location.  
  
It's late now, and I am in my bunk. The sound of her engines in my ears, sing to me. I know in my mind that she really can't speak, but for some reason I do not hear as many moans and groans as I have heard in the months preceding her decommissioning. She did well today and knows it. Others would laugh if they heard me thinking like this but, the Galactica to me, is a very special woman. 


End file.
